Associate Category Manager

About the Role

The Associate Category Manager is responsible for leading and supporting projects across multiple Indirect Procurement categories, including FM&S, R&L, and Marketing. This role involves acting as an internal Procurement consultant, working closely with Global Category Managers and Line of Business stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and support Procurement, optimization, and implementation projects across Indirect Procurement categories.
• Ensure successful project implementation, communication, and change management.
• Apply Indirect Procurement best practices within strategic Procurement and project management, including project initiation, execution, control, and implementation.
• Analyze market conditions, assess opportunities within defined project scopes, prepare business cases, and report on synergies achieved.
• Collaborate with business stakeholders, Procurement colleagues, and finance to identify and drive savings with a strong focus on Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
• Support negotiations with suppliers, aligning initiatives to optimize Total Cost of Ownership.
• Drive and support initiatives under Procurement Operational Excellence programs, Must Win Battles/Most Valuable Projects (MWBs/MVPs), Sustainability, and other strategic initiatives.
• Communicate the Procurement agenda and ensure continued realization of benefits achieved through project activities.
• Implement new processes and contracts and conduct relevant change management activities.
• Deliver on individual business targets and KPIs and contribute to overall Global Indirect Procurement KPIs and strategic ambitions.
• Support or lead Procurement and optimization projects across Indirect Procurement.
• Drive and support implementation initiatives to ensure benefit realization, including performance measurement, hyper-care activities, and identification of continued optimization opportunities.
• Actively apply and communicate the Strategic Procurement Methodology.
• Support or drive global strategic initiatives and ensure implementation into relevant regions.
• Proactively participate in relevant workgroups (e.g., Sustainability, Technology).
• Collaborate openly with peers across Procurement and P2P to enable operational excellence.

Stakeholder Engagement

• Ensure strong stakeholder engagement through effective project management and proactive collaboration.
• Align closely with Global Category Managers and peers to support global alignment, cross-functional collaboration, and process development.

Daily Operations

• Ensure effective usage of Procurement tools and contribute to continuous improvements of tools, processes, and templates.
• Deliver on defined KPIs, individual business targets, and Individual Development Plan (IDP).
• Contribute positively to team culture and social collaboration across the organization.

Requirements & Tech Stack

• Procurement tools
• NPP
• Sievo analytics
• Savings verification
• SPM
• e-Procurement tools
• CLM
• P2P